*where 'awesome' can sometimes mean 'awesome' and can sometimes mean 'absolutely horrible' - in fact, half the time I'm not sure which one myself. It's not my fault. I'm a product of the 1980s.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

"FTSE"

This one follows on a bit from the "Fannie Mae" entry of a month or so ago. Like Fannie Mae, it's something entirely opaque (to me) to do with economics. it is, I understand, a Stock Market 'index' rather like Dow Jones. Its name comes from an acronym of "Financial Times" and "Stock Exchange". All of this is so-far-so-boring, and would die that way if it were merely pronounced "eff-tee-ess-ee", as it by all right should be. But instead, oh those wacky economists, they figure their being cutesy (or "CTSE") by pronouncing it "footsie", as in the game of playing with someone's foot under the dining room table. So that economists can, with a completely straight face, say "the footsie went up today" and presume (wrongly) that they don't sound like morons.